It was hot. The sanguine nebula shrieked at his thermal and optical senses. His attacker came from behind, not giving him a single glimpse. He tried to reverse his hull polarity as the rogue Descendent pulled him in, but it was too powerful. Like a mote caught in a whirlpool he was sucked in, falling endlessly. He kept falling even as he felt the Descendent’s hull pressed against his. It forced a bond, but not the loving ones of a pairing, or even a navigational one for strength. Instead, he felt his koveran energy ripped from him as the Descendent impaled him from behind, the spurs on its skids slicing his hull and suffocating him in pain. He could hear its cackle as it pulled back, only to jab its skids through his hull in a violent clash of rahjaadium and flesh.
Wings awoke with a spin, hitting Kite in the bow with his tail, the aft terminal. She cushioned the blow with her distortion field, letting him reorient himself.
“Did you have the dream again?” she asked.
–
–
“We’re really going to have to do something about this.” Darnell said. He had stopped sleeping with the neural link active for fear of getting the nightmare Wings had quite consistently. Kite had even felt it once through a bond, which gave Carey a glimpse of it too.
“That ship’s dead. There’s no way it survived the gravimetric weapon Anton deployed.” Carey said.
They had been out of Black Wing for well over a year now. Anton had been disappointed to see them leave, but felt that Wings and Darnell would benefit from Kite’s and Carey’s support after their traumatic experience. He had even waived the fees and penalties associated with an early discharge from the navy, arguing that all of them had served the Galactic Council well beyond what their duty obliged them to. Anton, the coldest of the cold, had saved them.
It’s not dead. He must have initiated some strange bond with me during the battle. It’s why I can sense him.
Can you locate him?
No. I don’t know. But I fear for Kite’s safety.
I really think you’re just suffering from some old fashioned PTSD, the navy warned us about it when we –
It’s not PTSD.
Then what do you propose we do?
We find him and kill him.
And how do we do that?
The conversation with Wings was almost instantaneous, but Carey could tell it had transpired by the expression on Darnell’s face.
“We have an idea.” Darnell announced.
–
While neither of them had seen the Black Wing for over a year, Anton welcomed them like family. They all met at the outpost in Shiva’s Belt.
There were some new recruits, too. Anton said it had taken four ships to replace the two of them.
They were all seated in the main lounge.
“Darnell, Carey. Meet Marseille, Darwin, Lynx, and Fawkes.”
They all nodded at one another cordially. Fawkes was a Vorchan. He’d never seen one in person before.
“Darnell and Carey are ex-Black Wing. They left after an unfortunate turn of events.” Tory explained to the new members.
“The cause of that turn of events is what brings us back.” Carey explained, beckoning at Darnell.
“Wings thinks the rogue Descendent is still alive.” Darnell said.
“Why do you think that?” Anton asked.
“He’s been getting nightmares.” Darnell said.
None of the captains flinched. They all regarded Darnell with serious expressions, with occasional glances at Lief.
Lief let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, we did! Once!”
“Once can be enough for a link to form.” Anton said.
Everyone else looked away. Nobody wanted to ask how the link with the rogue Descendent had been formed.
“Can you trace the link?” Anton asked.
“It’s a blur, a shadow over a series of nodepoints.” Wings explained.
“Which nodepoints?”
“They are unidentifiable.”
“Can you jump to them?”
“I can, but they could be uninhabitable regions of space.”
“Do you still remember how to communicate across the beemspace band?” Anton asked.
“Of course.”
“Dart and Kite?” Anton asked.
“Uninhabitable areas used to be our specialty. With Dart’s speed and Kite’s gravimetrics augmenting her, we were pretty adaptive to environments.” Carey explained to Darnell.
“I don’t like the idea of fighting this ship in its turf. We’d lack the firepower to take it on.”
“We do not know how dangerous the region the nodepoints inhabits is. Kite and Dart could check the areas for us. If they are safe, you can call Black Wing in on the beemspace band, if it’s uninhabitable, you can return before the rogue Descendent tracks you.” Anton explained.
“If we’re lucky the Descendent might even follow you back.” Tory suggested.
“Bait tactics have worked before, but I don’t believe this Descendent is gullible enough.” said Daemon.
–
“This area looks clear.” Kite transmitted over the beemspace band. They had begun their search immediately. This was the first nodepoint of seventeen that were affected by the unknown signature. Wings monitored the nodescape for new nodepoints that would be affected by this signature, to perhaps give them a chance to intercept the Descendent in flight.
There was a lot of anxiety preceding the jumps, that moment between the activation of the beem sequence and the emergence on the other side seemed eternal at times. Wings would flare up to a bright green, veins burning, as he waited for Kite’s report. By the eleventh check, there was a noticeable aura of CKRO around him.
Kite got aroused by it and they decided to return home for the night and continue their search tomorrow.
–
The nightmares were worse than anything Wings had experienced. He awoke two hours into his sleep, Kite still nuzzled against his ventral side. He gently pulled away, ensuring she wasn’t hit.
Kite suddenly awoke with a start, slamming into Wings with her tail. She had experienced the nightmare too.
A new nodepoint had appeared while they slept.
They all immediately jumped to Shiva’s Belt and notified Ash, who got Black Wing ready.
The new nodepoint was clear, like all the others they had checked.
–
It seemed hopeless. If this ship was around it wasn’t biting. Wings wasn’t sure how to proceed anymore; he began to feel insecure.
These nightmares will destroy me. He transmitted one day.
His relationship with Kite had been in decline. They still flew about together, but intimacies were a rarity, now. Both of them seemed tired and drained, unable to sleep. Their hulls became pale and – three months into the nightmares – they finally went to see a doctor.
The doctor diagnosed it as PTSD – for both ships.
“But what about the other ships that were there, that experienced the trauma, why is it only ships related in a bond in some way that now have PTSD?” Darnell asked.
The doctor – condescendingly – explained that the stress disorder can be transmitted during full bonds.
Wings didn’t believe this to be the case; it didn’t explain the phantom nodepoints. The doctor they had spoken to claimed it was just in their head, and that the blurred nodescape was due to the mental damage of having the repressed memory of being ’accosted against one’s will’.
Wings didn’t remember being raped. Other ships had been there, but they had not arrived until after the first few skirmishes with the rogue Descendent. Wings highly doubted both he and Darnell had repressed the memories of an attack of that magnitude.
They continued searching around for more opinions from more doctors, but they all had similar diagnosis. None were really allowed to know they were Black Wing.
It all seemed hopeless.
–
Wings and Kite were floating listlessly another morning in the Zemorian system’s asteroid field, watching the rocks seem almost motionless as the two ships matched the average orbital speed of the belt.
Darnell and Carey were napping in Wing’s lounge, the holovision blaring a Zemorian reality show about food.
Darnell’s datapal chirped. It was inaudible at first, but the second chirp stirred him, disrupting his dream that had involved eating mass amounts of disgusting consumables. He grabbed it automatically, muttering a barely audible “answer.”
He didn’t quite recognize the voice on the other end, it was higher pitched, and seemed to speak in an accent that had an elegance Darnell couldn’t quite put tabs on. It was a very familiar voice though.
“I understand that you have a particularly interesting medical case surrounding your ship?” the voice asked.
“That’s correct.”
“The solution lies in the phantom signals on the nodescape, and the fact that Dart also suffers from the nightmares without having been directly affected by a bond.”
“I see. Who is this?”
“The only possible outcome is a hybrid symbiote, one which has embedded itself in a host and has now moved on to the six of you.”
Darnell was intrigued. “I see. What kind of symbiote?”
“Hybrid, existing partially in realspace.”
“In the rogue Descendent?”
“That is a possibility; the hybrid symbiote requires a host to branch out from, to be able to propagate itself efficiently. As the six of you do not exhibit the symptoms of a host, but rather the victims, it is safe to surmise that the host is the ship you encountered in the Alizarin Nebula.”
“How do you know where the encounter took place?”
“It is my job to know as much as I can about my patients.”
“Since when have we become your patients?”
“You become a patient when I believe no other doctor is capable of diagnosing your ailment sufficiently. I am the anti-thesis of medical incompetence.”
“Rahjaad?” Darnell asked.
Rahjaad was a Sentient Intelligence, derived from the consciousness of one of Zemoria’s most prominent doctors. He had treated the Black Nova personally, but, due to doctor-patient confidentialities, had never divulged any details about the character behind the proverbial name.
“I have reserved drydock time for your ship for fifteen hundred hours today.”
Only Rahjaad would be able to reserve a spot an hour early.
“I will be there.”
“Excellent.”
–
Rahjaad had taken the form of a heavily modified prototype fighter craft. The design was originally that of the Black Nova’s. Rumours had it that Rahjaad had been the founder of the Sentient Intelligence that operated the Black Nova’s fighter network.
Rahjaad’s arms were maintenance drones that hovered around Wings, probing every section of the hull, monitoring for things Darnell could only guess at.
His fighter-self floated next to Darnell in the lounge, the gravimetric lens the fighter used neither audible nor visible. The sensors hadn’t even detected his presence aboard the ship until he had appeared next to them.
It took less than a day for Rahjaad to identify the symbiote and determine its location.
Apparently the symbiote was a wisp of one that had operated against the Black Nova millennia ago. It had been destroyed, but not completely. Over the years it had propagated itself, made copies, like a living being.
“It undoubtedly survives off parasitic relationships with hosts, unable to draw the koveran energy it needs to sustain itself without having direct access to beemspace as it did upon its conception. It is a remarkable creature.”
“Killable?”
“Not in the sense you are referring to, but we may be able to disrupt the link it has created with your craft. If we eliminate the host in time; it will be difficult, the symbiote could kill all of you the moment it feels threatened. We will have to stun it before our attack.”
“Can it not understand what we are saying?”
“It is incapable of understanding speech, only intention. I will prepare the antidote.”
“Sounds good.”
“Be aware, there is a good chance at least one of you will die.”
“What? Why?”
“The antidote will purge the symbiote completely. But it settles in the base of the neural plexus, I may not be able to repair the damage it does.”
“But you have repaired the damage before?”
“As I had stated earlier: Yes. The Black Nova had suffered from a similar ailment.”
“Who deployed this deadly weapon?”
“The Coalition.”
“Wow.” Darnell wondered who else knew about this thing. “Do others know about this?”
“I have briefed Black Wing. They will assist in the elimination of the threat. We will attack tomorrow at 0800. There is nothing more to discuss.” And with that, Rahjaad and his drones vanished, and the docking arms released Wings.
Wings seemed excited, but Kite wasn’t feeling very confident. “I doubt I’ll survive the antidote. I can barely keep a gravimetric lens stable. I’m so tired.”
“You’ll be fine. Once the link is destroyed we’ll be able to draw all the koverans we need.” Wings said reassuringly, and with a loving nudge added, “We’ll be back to our old selves again.”
Some color finally returned to Kite’s hull as she thought of that. “That’ll be nice.”
“It’ll be wonderful!”
But Kite’s hull paled again, drifting off into a fruitless sleep.
Wings instinctively pulled her against his hull, drifting into a relaxed but semi-aware state. He pulled them into the recesses of one of the larger asteroids.
–
Wings had another nightmare. This time it involved the asteroid field, a massive bedang waited for them outside, snarling. It had blood-stained teeth and large black eyes nearly half a kilometre in diameter. The creature itself was several kilometres long, and had a series of spurs that ran along its spine.
“I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE!” it bellowed, shattering the asteroid they were hiding in and waking the four of them from the dream.
A cry filled the beemspace band, infusing them with a burst of energy that only adrenaline and adrexin could provide.
The cry was from Shiva’s Belt. It was Dart. Wings prepared to jump.
Kite still wasn’t awake. Something was wrong with her. Her hull had paled completely, there were no koveran trace elements running through her veins. Through Darnell’s eyes Wings noticed that Carey was still having fever dreams as well. Darnell was applying towels to her forehead to control the fever.
Wings cancelled the jump, tending to Kite. She wouldn’t wake up. He was about to cry out to Rahjaad when both Carey and Kite plunged into the conscious world.
“Dart!” both of them exclaimed. “They’re all dying. We have to help them!”
Panic consumed Darnell and Wings, “Dying?! How could Black Wing lose?”
“Jump!” Carey ordered, commandeering Kite’s beem drive. She resisted, as did Wings and Darnell.
“You’re crazy; we don’t stand a chance. We have to run.” Darnell argued.
Carey grabbed Darnell’s arm, still drenched in sweat. “Don’t you see? There is nowhere to run. Distance is meaningless to him. We have to kill him now!”
“No.” Darnell said, “I will not jump Wings into a death trap.”
Wings used his dextrous skid to hook around Kite’s skid, locking them together and disrupting their ability to jump.
Kite was venting koverans now, anxious.
“Conserve your energy. He wants to tire you out.”
“Maybe we should jump!”
“If Darnell says its suicide, I believe him.”
There was another transmission over the beemspace band, it was Ash: “We could really use your help here soldiers. We’re at X13.”
“I’ve never heard Ash afraid. That ship is incapable of fear.”
“If he’s transmitting it means Anton is incapacitated.” Kite said drowsily.
Wings got a flash of insight. “X13 is far in the outer rim, VE territory. What is Black Wing doing there?”
“I don’t know.” Darnell replied.
The Descendent extended his skids, decoupling from Kite. “Come with me, I need to check something. Can you jump?”
Kite muttered a yes as Wings jumped to the outpost in Shiva’s Belt.
Ash and the others were there. Dart was missing.
“Where is Dart?” Wings asked.
“We haven’t seen her since yesterday. Probably off on the far side.” Emerald suggested. The ships slowly became aware of Kite’s and Wing’s aroused state.
“How are you two feeling?”
“Dart is in danger. The Descendent lured her. We have to jump to her. I have her co-ordinates.”
It would be interesting that it would be Wings now that saves Dart. The Black Wing fleet arrived with the Descendent on top of Dart, disappearing into beemspace before the fleet’s CKRO could even dissipate.
They were near the accretion disc of a white dwarf. Kite didn’t have the strength to break free of the dwarf’s pull and Ash barely grabbed her in time. Emerald bolted for Dart and pulled her away before the dead star could pull her farther into its core. They would have to leave the gravity well before they could jump since they were not acclimatized to this region. The rogue Descendent knew that.
Seeing Dart’s torn, bleeding hull, Wings finally had enough. Both his and Darnell’s decision were final.
“I will face them.” they transmitted.
Wings had been here before, in his dreams. He knew the gravimetric constants for this particular region and compensated for the affects, tracing the Descendents route. As usual, the Descendent stayed hidden, for now.
“I’m here.” Wings said. “It’s me you’ve wanted. To have your ‘revenge’. Well let’s have it then, so this can finally be over.”
“You’ve cost me many of my friends. I only have a few left now…” the Descendent emerged from a cloud of gas several kilometres off. It slowly approached them. They were in another nebula. It seemed to be this Descendent’s favourite place to strike.
He thought of Kite, and knew there was only one way she would be truly safe.
Wings kept the approaching Descendent on his dorsal side, keeping a defensive stance, his AHC ready to deploy. He matched the ship’s slow, taunting approach, making it have to accelerate more and more to finally come within magnetic grappling range.
The Descendent pulled up with an eerie tenderness, and Wings rolled to the right, revealing his ventral side in a submissive stance. It dug into his ventral side, forcing a bond immediately. As bonds shared all the data a ship had, Wings experienced the Descendent’s body, as well as its countless victims, lost to the symbiote’s insatiable thirst for koveran energy.
The Descendent, in turn, experienced all of Wing’s memories, learning of the symbiote, but unperturbed by the revelation. It drew in closer, cutting at Wings’ skin.
Suddenly the Descendent was hit with a jolt of pain as the two extra terminals tried to link with the rogue Descendent, arriving as painful phantom signals.
It stunned the Descendent for a moment, crooning from the pleasure of the pain. It gave Wings a chance to break free of the magnetic embrace and strike with his sharp extended skids. He pushed with all his might, trying to cut through the rogue Descendents thick, pronged hull.
Dishearteningly, the rogue Descendent helped him push, shuddering in pleasure as Wings’ skids cut across the Descendents hull.
Wings whimpered in defeat and the Descendent embraced him again, trying to pierce his hull.
It wouldn’t be long until the Descendent’s thrusts started doing damage, and Wings would suffer the death of his nightmares. For a moment he hoped someone would save him, but both Kite and Dart were incapacitated. It would be better like this, if he alone fell victim to this ship.
I built my first batch of fighters a few months ago. I wanted to surprise Kite but I got all caught up. They have beem drives. You can get away. Wings suggested, seeing his indicators plummeting to the red. He was fully aware of the fate that would follow.
I’m not leaving. It’s time I faced him. Darnell replied, trying not to think of the fact that they were exchanging their last words.
The Descendent finally pierced Wings’ hull, and he cried out in pain as the remaining blood and koveran energy he had left was ripped from him.
Darnell was overcome with a plethora of neural warnings as well as phantom pain signals before the neural interface overloaded and died. He resolutely drew his sword and made his way over to the wound, commandeering the eyes of the surviving maintenance drones and ship systems.
He caught a glimpse of the Captain, scurrying like a feral rodent. The rogue Descendent had given the decompressed chamber an atmosphere, the wound sealed by the massive purging device the Descendent had grown on its underside, mimicking some sort of monstrous mosquito.
Darnell walked straight up to the weapon that had been used to kill his ship. He looked at the ominous, serrated blade with a cold indignation.
“After I kill your captain I will kill you next.” hissed Darnell. He heard the sound of approaching people, their shuffling irregular steps inconsistent with the sound of normal bipedal raumenoids. Like zombies, they lunged at him. Like zombies, he struck them all down with his sword.
“DIE!” yelled the feral Captain, his back arched and clothes torn. He didn’t look human anymore, his skin a blistering red, veins bursting with koveran energy. He mounted Darnell from behind, burning into his suit with his koveran-infused skin. Darnell wrestled him off and attacked with his sword, the koveran-properties of the weapon diffused as they contacted the creature’s skin, merely knocking it back. The symbiote-infected captain lunged forward with a delirious countenance and Darnell thrust at him with all his might, the koveran sword impaled the lost captain, and within moments, he was on the ground, gasping for air, blood staining Wings’ floor.
Darnell yelled as he began bringing the sword down on the dying captain’s body, taking more and more of the captain’s body with each strike, and losing more and more of himself. With the captain finally dead, he stumbled towards the ship’s weapon, it had an airlock that he could take to enter this Descendent and destroy it.
“I have never encountered such determined rage.” chirped the ship with glee. Even its voice was a broken parody of a true Descendent. The pride and honour of the voice replaced with a dark delirium.
He cut at the ship’s bulkheads with his sword as he made his way to the neural plexus, with the ship merely shuddering and moaning in pleasure with each strike. Frustrated, he thrust the sword into the junction between two bulkheads, a very sensitive area for a Descendent. The sword got jammed, and the ship cried out in ecstasy.
Unable to pull the sword out of the junction, Darnell continued on to the neural plexus, taking the ladder to the upper tier. The doors opened with little resistance, the ship didn’t seem at all panicked, waiting anxiously for him to reach the bridge so that he may begin removing the maintenance hatches that led to its brain.
He cut away at the junctions with a small laser drill, far from the strength of a koveran sword but sufficient for the relatively weak armour located under the bridge. The ship wasn’t designed to defend from attacks that originated from inside the Descendent.
As he pulled away the small veins that littered the maintenance tunnel, he could slowly begin to feel the ship’s pleasure as its presence became apparent on his neural interface. The device had somehow become active. He tried to turn it off but it seemed stuck. It didn’t matter, this would only allow him to feel the suffering he would inflict on this murderer.
He laughed giddily as he cut away more veins, nearly at the neural plexus.
This area was the most sensitive, the pain was unbearably pleasurable, making him shudder and collapse in orgasm as he cut into the ship with a laser drill, forcing him to stop and rest for a few moments. He continued again a few minutes later, only to be overcome with more pleasure.
“You will suffer! I will make you suffer!” he yelled, cutting at the final bulkhead before he reached the ship’s vulnerable neural plexus.
“Yes!” the ship pleaded, “Make me suffer!”
He removed the final section of the neural plexus. He froze, staring in surprise. It had already been disfigured beyond recognition, sections grafted on each other in a mishmash attempt at ensuring the ship was able to sustain its consciousness. There was nothing he could do to this that hadn’t already been done, and cutting through all the wiring would take an eternity.
“You will suffer! I will avenge Wings for the atrocities that were inflicted upon him. I will avenge him! You will see!” Darnell’s veins were a blistering red now.
He cut away at some of the neural links, the sudden lapses in rationality affecting him more than the ship. It wasn’t long before he could barely remember how to stand up straight. He reverted to a more comfortable, four-legged stance.
“I will avenge him. I will kill them, kill them all!” Darnell howled.